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Tragic hero
A tragic hero is the protagonist of a tragedy. Tragic heroes appear in the dramatic works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Strindberg, and many other writers. A tragic hero is one that has one major flaw and the audience usually feels pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Aristotle's tragic Aristotle established his view of what makes a tragic in his Book. Aristotle suggests that a hero of a tragedy must evoke in the audience a sense of pity or fear, saying, “the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity."S.H. Butcher, The Poetics of Aristotle, (1902), pp. 45-47 He establishes the concept that the emotion of pity stems not from a person becoming better but when a person receives undeserved misfortune and fear comes when the misfortune befalls a man like us. This is why Aristotle points out the simple fact that, “The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” Aristotle also establishes that the hero has to be “virtuous” that is to say he has to be "a morally blameless man” (article 82). The Hero's flaw is what will bring him success but death by the end of the work. Aristotle contests that the tragic hero has to be a man “who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty.” He is not making the hero entirely good in which he can do no wrong but rather has the hero committing an injury or a great wrong leading to his misfortune. Aristotle is not contradicting himself saying that the hero has to be virtuous and yet not eminently good. Being eminently good is a moral specification to the fact that he is virtuous.Charles H. Reeves, The Aristotelian Concept of The Tragic Hero, Vol. 73, No. 2 (1952), Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/291812 pp. 172-188 He still has to be to some degree good. Aristotle adds another qualification to that of being virtuous but not entirely good when he says, “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.” He goes on to give examples such as Oedipus and Thyestes.” Examples * Orestes in Aeschylus' Oresteia (458 BC). * Creon in Sophocles' Antigone (c. 442 BC). * Medea in Euripides' Medea (431 BC). * Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King (429 BC). * Brutus in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599). * Hamlet in Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601). * Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear (c. 1603-1606). * Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1603-1607). * Othello in Shakespeare's Othello (1604). * Tadamichi Kuribayashi on Battle of Iwo Jima (1945) * Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949). * John Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953). * Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (1955). * Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons (1954). * Boromir and Denethor in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1956). * Yuri Zhivago and Pavel Antipov in Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (1957). * Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader in George Lucas' Star Wars (1977) * Turin Turambar in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin (2007). * Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008). * Sigurd in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun (2009). References Sources * Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP. ISBN 0-8014-8154-6. * Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets. By Aristotle. Cambridge: Hackett. ISBN 978-0-87220-033-3. * Pavis, Patrice. 1998. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Trans. Christine Shantz. Toronto and Buffalo: U of Toronto P. ISBN 978-0-8020-8163-6. Category:Heroes by role Hero